A young Queen Victoria rides out of the palace with her dashing husband. It’s June, and she is happy as the open carriage moves down Constitution Hill. Waiting on a grassy verge is a young man. Scarcely that – he’s a boy, just 18, with dark eyes and a baby face, short of stature and wearing a high top hat, as was fashionable in 1840. As the Queen draws closer he raises two pistols, determined to fire on the pregnant Victoria.
'Mental health is not only about darkness and depression' Read more The young man is Edward Oxford, and he’s about to fulfil his dream of becoming notorious. Edward:... read more

Related news

It was the ninth time in the space of 10 days that Sherry Denness had tried to kill herself. "It felt like checkmate - there were no open doors or other ways for my life to turn, I just wanted to die," she says.
Only just 18, Sherry has been...

A mother has released shocking pictures of the scars and injuries she claims her anorexic daughter has sustained because of a catalogue of failures at a mental health unit.
Kelly Wilthew alleges staff have allowed 17-year-old Faith to repeatedly...

CAPITAL axe attacker Peter Kirkwood, who has been caged in Scotland's top psychiatric hospital for the past 28 years, is seeking a sex change on the NHS.
Carstairs patient Kirkwood has changed his name to Rosemary and is allowed to wear women’s...

A girl who has battled anorexia for 16 years is now so gripped by the condition that she has not eaten for more than a year.
Emma Duffy, 24, began to suffer from the condition after a teacher called her classmate fat when she was just eight years...

'Many of us hold that suicide can be the right, or at least a morally acceptable, response to a life no longer deemed worth living by the person living it.' Photograph: VStock/Alamy/Alamy Both my maternal grandparents attempted suicide. Both failed,...

On a hot summer evening two years ago, my best friend's husband rang.
'Chloe's missing,' he said.
My friend is blessed with a wonderful husband, two children and a lovely home. She has also suffered from depression since her teens. She had already...